


Disobedience

by smokefall



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Book: The Magician's Nephew, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-17 12:17:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/867453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokefall/pseuds/smokefall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Jadis sets out to learn Narnia's secrets, and Narnia is not obliging.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disobedience

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kastaka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kastaka/gifts).



The garden is so fervently green, so full, and still blooming, trembling, sheened with silver and surging under the surface with sea-blue shadows. In the unexpected heat of the hilltop, the place seems to beat against its grassy wall, pulsing life into the sticky new world around it.

She permits herself a smile: she found the world's heart, held in by nothing but a pair of gold-latticed gates. No magic needed to wrench them apart.

It's the writing on those gates that makes her pause:

_Come in by the gold gates or not at all,_   
_Take of my fruit for others or forbear,_   
_For those who steal or those who climb my wall_   
_Shall find their heart’s desire and find despair._

Were there anyone to hear, she might laugh and say that such admonishments must be meant for lesser creatures; must surely not apply to her. But there is no one, and it would be one of her less truthful boasts. The words might well have been written for her and her alone. They are the words of a world throwing down its gauntlet.

The sweet green sound of the place is still filling her head; her veins feel made of gold and they are ringing with adventure. Like a girl stealing honeyfruit from a high-walled orchard, she runs, springs up, scrambles at the top. The turf stains her robes but she laughs, the smell of crushed grass surprising and wonderful so long after grass was wiped out from Charn.

Inside the garden, the heady warmth is sweeter than she would have thought possible, and the scents of a thousand unknown fruits float soft in the hushed green air. They hang among the trees like coloured lanterns, gold, ember and palest blue, glancing gentle light to play among the lush shadows. How long since she last sank teeth into crisp sugar-filled flesh? She could stop here all day and taste them all -  _will_ taste them all - but not yet.

The tree she has come to find needs no searching for. Its silver apples are easily larger than her powerful fist, and they cast shimmering white light into the blue shade, as bright as last night's fresh-sprung moon. In the near-silence of this place, under the whisper of the nearby fountain, they hum on the edge of hearing - reverberating, like her, to this new world's tune.

She walks straight across to it, picks an apple, and holds it just a breath away from her lips. Eyes closed, its dancing silver light still steals through her eyelids -and the scent! If the air had made her feel new, this makes her feel endless. Sweeter than happiness and stronger than triumph; she can barely imagine how it will taste.

When she opens her eyes again, the first sight they light on stops her from taking the intended bite. There's a bird high in the tree, gorgeously plumed in saffron and purple, its own eye open just a hair's-width. It is plump with young magic; its gleaming feathers radiate wisdom, gentleness and power.

'You should not try to stop me,' she warns.

'I shall not try,' says the bird. It's voice is low and warm, the voice a slumbering fire might speak with. Its eye is half-open now, and fixed on her. 'You chose not to come in by the gate,' it says, more observation than accusation.

'And prove myself a cringing slave by bowing to that smug little rhyme? Not I!'

'We are still becoming,' says the bird. 'Why upset our dawn so hastily?'

'Because, hatchling, I am Jadis, who was Queen of Charn and will be Queen again. I ended my world before yours was dreamed of, and I will know the secrets of yours before your dawn is out.'

'And what will you do with those secrets, Queen-that-was?' It's voice remains cordial, but its eye is wide open now, and glimmering like a war-beacon. 'When you have no power here?'

She laughs. 'Do you not understand? It's true: I had nothing when I came, save for the strength of my arms, but with these arms I scaled your wall. Your laws have no hold on me.'

The bird bows its scarlet head. 'Then yours is the first rebellion, and yours the first theft.'

She brings the apple to her lips again, and takes a deep bite. The sweetness is bursting and deep, more filled with flavours than the finest and oldest of Charn's wines. It runs over her chin, as warm as everything else in this place and strangely thick; for an absurd moment she imagines it is her own blood. But no, it is the world's blood, spilling down her throat, filling her ringing veins, washing out all trace of death from inside her, and she is more bursting with life than she has ever been before, but the sensation does not stop; the beating golden life that flows in her is turning sharper and wilder with every pulse of her heart, becomes a burning agony, and just when she thinks it will consume her it's gone, and all the nerves in her body and the marrow of her bones are suddenly - irrevocably, she knows - cold as ice.

The bird's unblinking eye is still on her; it seems to flare a deeper gold as if to say:  _see_ _?_

'You cheated,' she says. The world's magic is at work on her, but its workings are even more deeply obscured than before.

'I never said you'd find knowledge here,' it says, and bows its head in feigned sleep once more.

The garden is changed; not a leaf out of place but the near-inaudible humming has turned flat, and the warmth is close and stinging. Through the soured air she hears another's approach: the boy, obedient fool, entering through the gate. She retreats between the trees, to watch what he'll do, taking another sweet, unbearable bite as she does.

The trailing fronds of the trees at either side shake slightly, as if the garden is laughing at her. Let it laugh. A small mistake, to suppose that to taste Narnia's magic would be to know it. No matter: she is immortal now, and she is patient when needs be; this world would tremble to see the terrible patience she endured to learn the Word that ended her last world. Magic can be learned the long way.

Juice burning on her lips and life freezing in her heart, Jadis begins to plan.


End file.
